Transcript A. Marlow - Co-ordination with Coastal Monitoring

Co-ordination with coastal monitoring
Angela Marlow – Senior Advisor for the Southern
and South West Coast
www.gov.uk/natural-england
The South East Regional Coastal Monitoring
Programme
• Continuous and fixed point typographical beach profiles of shingle
beaches for flood and coastal protection
• Many of the sites that are surveyed have a number of nature
conservation designation – SSSI, SPA, SAC, Ramsar
• Assents are in place to ensure that surveys do not impact the
interest features of these sites
Surveyors
• Surveys are collected using GPS kit, attached to either a survey
pole (for profiles), a rucksack (for continuous) or a quad bike (for
continuous)
Proposed changes to the surveys
• Dominique Townsend - Coastal Monitoring Canterbury City Council
• Review and reduce number of surveys and move timing
Proposed survey window:
• Spring: 1st April - 30th June
• Autumn: 1st October - 31st November (no change to current
schedule)
• Breeding bird season
Objectives collaboration
1. Achieve an overview agreement with NE on the programme
2. Ensure all sites are being treated accordingly, individual assents are
in place where needed
3. Ensure all sites can be surveyed new window
4. Disseminate relative CCO report to NE staff member – explore how
data from CCO can be for nature conservation
Survey areas
• For the purpose of coastal monitoring, the coastline is split into
surveying units based on sediment cells
• Cell 4 covers between the Isle of Grain to Selsey Bill
• Cell 5 covers between Selsey Bill to Portland Bill
• Cell 4 - there are 76 units 51 designations – ~ 12 with breeding birds
• Cell 5 - there are 132 units 72 designations – ~ 10 with breeding
birds
Shingle - Conservation interest
• Globally restricted few occurrences outside north-west Europe,
Japan and New Zealand
• Size 2mm - 200mm
Conservation interest - shingle
• Rare and finite resource (Packham et al 2001)
• Geomorphology – spits, barrier beaches, cuspate forelands
• Vegetated shingle – plants, lichens and bryophytes supports rare
and specialised invertebrates and bird species. (50% UK vegetated
shingle located Dungeness and Rye)
• Overwintering birds feeding / roosting and breeding
Type of impacts
• Trampling, disturbance - habitats, geomorphology – shingle ridges/
recurves, and birds (ground-nesting birds)
• Shingle - compaction
• Keep to existing pathways, avoiding vegetation, ATV drive along the
active shingle foreshore (providing this is not chalk platform).
• Other sensitive habitats such as saltmarsh
• Avoid sensitive times of the year – breeding birds / over-wintering
Pagham Harbour spit – geomorphology /
vegetated shingle
Dungeness - vegetated shingle and coastal
geomorphology
Vegetated Shingle – plant and lichen species
Ground nesting - little terns
Little tern – breeding abundance
Factors affect breeding success
• Beaches, spits and inshore islands
• Nest close to feeding grounds shallow water small fish
• Vulnerable to disturbance people
• Predation
• Beach management
• Washed out
Ground nesting - Ring plovers / Oystercatchers
CCO survey data – used for conservation
July 2016 ‐ update
• Breach developed since
September 2015 to the latest
survey in June 2016 - LIDAR
• Created time series that
showed how the breach
developed
• Report - Uwe Dornbusch
(EA)
Monitoring Medmerry - habitat compensation site
• LIDAR used to show
the evolution of the
breach and roll back of
the shingle ridge 100m
• Exposed a compacted
mud foreshore
• 'Overwash fans' of
shingle
Operational Use of Remote Sensing for
Environmental Monitoring
• Dynamic nature of the
coast
• Geomorphology
• Topography influences the
habitat formation
• Remote sensing - large
areas over different time
periods
http://publications.naturalengland.or
g.uk/publication/130046?category=
2430109
Examples
• Shingle-morphological change; vegetation cover over time
• Saltmarsh/mudflat- accretion/erosion patterns over whole estuary
• Shore profile transects in individual units
Defra Centre of Excellence on Earth Observations
• Defra 25 year plan for the Environment
• Launch 16 October 2015
• Greater use of earth observation - drive to use the best information
with least cost
• Cefas, Natural England, JNCC, Environment Agency and the core
department
www.gov.uk/natural-england